Toys For Tots Buyer Has Gift For Shopping

NORFOLK — Sylvia Walker could teach Santa Claus a thing or two. For one thing, she gets her toys wholesale.

The Newport News resident has spent every year for the past 17 volunteering her time to buy toys for thousands of needy children.

Walker has proved her forte as Santa's main helper in the annual Toys for Tots program. And she pretty much has buying toys down to a science.

Stalking the aisles of the Nesson Sales Co.'s 18th Street warehouse Friday, Walker knew what she was looking for.

"I like these things a lot," she said, holding up a round cannister of plastic looking blocks. The children "can't break 'em."

"I need two dozen of these," she shouted to a clerk standing two aisles over, near the Kermit the Frog dolls.

Walker doesn't strike a Santa pose either. In black sneakers, slacks, a light gray blazer and carrying a large brown leather shoulder bag, Walker checked prices and quickly barked out the quantities needed: a dozen walkie-talkies, two dozen radios, four dozen board games, another dozen walkie-talkies and on and on.

Lew Goldsticker, vice president of sales at the warehouse, sent in a second clerk to help fill the order. Goldsticker smiled broadly and watched Walker stroll through the aisles. "She knows what to look for."

As the clerks scrambled to fill the order, Walker made her way down another aisle. It appeared as if she wasn't even looking at the toys, but suddenly her eyes fell on an item. "There's that stroller," she said, pointingt to a doll's baby buggy.

Walker has about 1,200 children to buy presents for this year. Their families have been referred to the Marine Corps Reserve Center, on Warwick Boulevard, by local social-service agencies. At two or three presents apiece for each child, that means a few thousand gifts. While the number and needs vary from year to year, Walker stills winds up picking out thousands of dolls, trucks and coloring books.

She starts buying in July every year, but still has plenty to buy up until the week before Christmas. Until two years ago, she stored the gifts in her house. "My husband said this has to go," she said. Now she keeps them in a storage shed until the Marines take them off her hands. Another organization, the Peninsula Association of Life Underwriters, then gets into the act, helping the parentsof the needy children pick out the gifts.

Walker started helping the Marines Corps with its holiday Toys for Tots gift drive 23 years ago, but just wrapping and sorting the presents were not enough. She had to get as deeply involved as she could. "I'm not the sort who just getsinvolved in something for two or three years."

Through the years she became the chief buyer for the program. Many people give new toys to the charity, but when cash donations are given, Walker does the spending.

Even cancer surgery just two months before last Christmas couldn't keep her from buying gifts. A month after surgery, a friend saw her in the Hampton Toys-R-Us store and told her she shouldn't have been out of bed. The children simply needed presents and she had to get them, she said.

"I'm not aware of anyone else on the Peninsula who's singlehandedly done more for disadvantaged children," said Capt. Jeffrey Brown, of the Marine Corps Reserve Center of Warwick Boulevard.

Her cancer is still not beaten. But despite painful radiation treatments and chemotherapy, Walker insists on spending long hours on her pet project.

The stories of those who benefit keep her going.

Four years ago a man came to the reserve center to pick up toys for his children, who otherwise would have nothing Christmas morning. He sat down and cried. A severe car accident had kept him out of work, he said. "'I never thought I'dbe needing this,'" Walker recalled the man saying.

The following year, he came back, but with two dozen gifts for other children.

Walker, like Santa, takes Christmas Day off. She spends it with her family, husband, two adult children and two grandchildren.

As the warehouse clerks loaded her "sleigh," a Country Squire station wagon, Walker was asked what she wanted for Christmas.

"There's nothing I really want," she replied. Thinking it over for a moment, she added, "Maybe just some Giorgio" perfume.